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San Diego workers will power-wash streets with a bleach solution in an attempt to stop the spread of Hepatitis A:
At least 15 people have died in San Diego from an ongoing hepatitis A outbreak. In an effort to stop the spread of the viral liver disease, city officials have begun power-washing streets across the downtown area, according to NBC San Diego.
As of Monday, workers dressed in protective white gear and red hard hats were seen outside spraying the sidewalks with a bleach-based liquid in hopes of killing the virus that lives in human feces. "We're probably going to be doing them every other Monday, see how that works out at least for the time being," Jose Ysea, a city spokesman, told NBC San Diego.
The high-pressure power-washing system using bleach will hopefully remove "all feces, blood, bodily fluids or contaminated surfaces," according to a sanitation plan included in a letter delivered to San Diego city officials, the Associated Press reports. For now, just streets in San Diego are being washed, but in the near future hand-washing and street-sanitizing efforts will be implemented in other cities in the region, Dr. Wilma Wooten, the region's public health officer, told the AP.
Also at LA Times. San Diego outbreak page.
Previously: San Diego Declares Emergency Due to Outbreak of Hepatitis A
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday September 13 2017, @05:18PM
Smells like... victory
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snow on Wednesday September 13 2017, @05:24PM (10 children)
Maybe the real problem is lack of public bathrooms? If people are pissing/shitting on the streets, it's probably because they have no other choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @05:28PM (8 children)
Please, people, your "rational" solutions do not apply to irrational people. There is a lot more going on with homeless people than a lack of public bathrooms; the solution needs to be much more comprehensive than that. They cannot be allowed to live on the streets; they are violating both public and private property, and should be removed and treated for their mental deficiencies.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Wednesday September 13 2017, @05:53PM (3 children)
Being members of the public, how can they be violating public property?
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:04PM
You've completely altered everyone's thoughts on this matter. Well done. You're a genius. I nominate this person for the Supreme Court!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:06PM
By shitting on it. Leaving needles all over the place, Camping
Our parks and libraries are unusable. Our public bathrooms have shit on the ceiling. These people used to live in institutions and they need to be put back into them.
--Creimer
(Score: 4, Informative) by leftover on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:18PM
Shitting on sidewalks and in ornamental fountains, peeing in drinking fountains. Everyday stuff like that. If I hadn't seen it firsthand, it would never have occurred to me that someone would do that. A small but conspicuous fraction of people on the street are there because the states closed their mental health facilities. Everything was supposed to be handled "locally" but of course no localities have facilities, staff, or funds to handle severely mentally ill people. If you do not live in or visit a city with a large homeless population I sincerely suggest that you make a trip to educate yourself. Look for the people, look at the people, go and talk to them. If you are not changed by this, you are as ignorant and defective as the Atlas Shrugged crowd and should be ashamed of yourselves.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:01PM (3 children)
People such as yourself should be put in padded cells. Luckily for you we believe in the whole concept of freedom. How do you not see how your words echo those of every genocidal maniac ever?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:38PM (2 children)
RIGHT? You do, right?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @07:19PM (1 child)
Of course, which is why I said lucky for you we believe in freedom. It was an attempt to point out how such authoritarian ideas as yours are flawed. You don't like the homeless, and I don't like people like you. So, shall we both toss our hated groups into concentration camps and deny them freedom? Or are you willing to acknowledge that your ideas are inhumane and against everything we stand for in the US?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @07:56PM
Here. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @05:30PM
Sort of, around here we've tried providing public restrooms, but we've had issues with them being used for prostitution and sex. Ultimately, you are right that the cause of this is effectively a lack of public restrooms, but the problem is a lot harder to solve than it might seem.
Really, cities that have homeless need to find some way of funding some sort of minimalist housing with restrooms so that things like this don't happen. Unfortunately, the money for that tends to go to corporate welfare and subsidizing people who choose to live in regions that don't have any industry left.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:25PM (2 children)
AFAIK there are vaccinations available for Hep A. Wouldn't mandatory (with exceptions permitted where necessary, obviously) vaccination be more effective?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @07:02PM
I assume Hep A is a multi-part vaccine (I know at least one of the Hep ones is, but don't recall which). So it takes several shots with a month or so gap between them. So getting everyone vaccinated, and immune, would take months. Hopefully this is quicker.
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:12AM
There is a Hep A vaccine. But we don't give it anymore, for the same reason we don't vaccinate against Polio: it functionally doesn't exist in countries with a bare modicum of modern sanitation.
The way Hep A is spread is known as fecal-oral transmission, and the densest person reading this comment can figure out where things went wrong to allow that to spread. Keep the shit out of the food supply, and/or your mouth, and/or your waterways, problem solved.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @07:13PM (4 children)
I fucking hate it when a chemical name is substituted with a a vague term meaning almost nothing. You say "Bleach" is used in this operation. It is a chemical, it has a name. "Bleach" can be anything with bleaching properties.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @07:42PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @07:46PM
Meh, unless its a well known chemical it is very understandable why a journalist would use a catch-all easy to identify name. If they hand out food to the homeless do they have to specify every item?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 13 2017, @07:54PM (1 child)
I can guarantee they are not spraying sodium percarbonate. This is a job for sodium hypochlorite.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @10:05PM
Actually, it's a job for sodium cyanide...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @07:46PM
...little hard, a little strict: execution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_xDdpT4YwQ [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:23AM (2 children)
Reading this thread was painful. And it hasn't improved even after several hours. So lemme break it down for the ignorant.
I own my home and the land it is on. You can't shit in my front yard. (I'm trying to explain to the neighbor that letting their dog shit on my part of the sidewalk is also a bad thing... alas, civilization ain't what it was) The other people who live in a town come together and form a government to serve our needs we can't easily deal with individually. That government builds commons like roads, sewers, parks, a city hall, etc. All these things exist as assets to benefit those taxed to pay for them. So allowing some bum to shit on the sidewalk is not something we must permit; we can convince the elected officials (or replace them) to solve the problem.
Private groups are of course free to head off government intervention in all the ways they currently do, nothing that follows should disparage those attempts because such are the backbone of a healthy society. If the government has to step in it means the problem has got out of control.
But in the same way I can tell somebody they can't shit in my front yard the city can tell people they can't shit on the sidewalk, the park, etc. Further they can even enact laws against vagrancy and tell those who do not work in the town, live in the town and aren't there to patronize the merchants and other facilities that they can't stay. They can lock them up if they persist. They SHOULD fine them, lock them up, let em work off the sentence on public service and finally earn a bus ticket out. Especially in high cost of living areas, there is and should not be, any "right" to live there.
In fact, that would be an excellent solution in areas with extreme cost of living for more than the 'homeless'[1]. Phase down the housing and other welfare payments and encourage out migration. Then redevelop the "low income housing" into profitable units and help drive down the rents. And in places like San Fran with onerous land use laws they would drive out pretty much everyone making less than $250K, and yea they would realize eventually they need a middle and lower class, you can't run a city with only upper class "knowledge worker" types. And you can't build enough freeways or mass transit to have all those people commute. But they would learn and the market would re-adapt.
And everything said above about cities applies equally to larger political entities. We as a Nation do have a right to decide who we allow in and who we do not and we have the right to decide that on whatever basis we deem proper. If we wanted to say zero net immigration if unemployment is greater than X% we can and should implement it. If we decide we only want people highly likely to be self sufficient within a couple of years, or even instantly, we could. If we decide we want to establish guidelines to assure immigrants are socially / civilizationally compatible to hasten integration that too is legitimate. Any arguments to the contrary are void of reason and logic.
[1] Considering the massive welfare system in most places with a lot of "homeless" it is usually the case they should be more accurately labeled the "mentally ill."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @03:47AM
My town has a problem with both transients and homeless. The homeless are the ones who live here year round, have issues keeping them homeless, and are dependent on begging and handouts to get by. The transients are the ones that would show up once a year for a forest festival and only leave once they had burned up the supply of handouts. It would leave the actual homeless without needed resources because other than seasonality it was hard to tell the difference.
A few years ago the transients just decided to stay. There was enough maintained park space and a reasonable enough climate that it wasn't an issue. Now we have seven city sponsored homeless camps for people to stay in and I still count at least 10 on my short jaunt from the parking structure to my office in the morning. Without a dedicated jail it is too expensive to enforce any non felony wrongdoings so businesses had to hire their own guard force (which conveniently also cleans) but it has not really helped.
There have only been a few assults/stabbings but still significantly more than normal, these days you actually have to lock your car doors when you are out and about as well. Maybe being stabbed and having your property violated is part and parcel with living in the modern world, but I find it unacceptable.
The problem is that even if we help the people who are homeless for a real reason and need a hand, the segment of the population causing the issues is more like Diogenes who refuse the excesses of society. All I ask is that they not steal, violate private property, shit in the provided restrooms, and not stab people.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:33PM
Oh wow, that first sentence was a doozy! Jmorris claiming superiority and the ability to "break it down"? Lol, I think we've had enough stupid troll shit for one thread. Except you're not a typical Troll, you seem to believe your own stupidity!